Tools/Components for building a Survey Application

Question

We are designing a survey application with the following features

1. The users will be able to select questions from a set of predefined questions.
2. Each question has a question type defined which dictates the type of answer (multiple choice, DB look up, free text etc)
3. The user can create a hierarchy of sections with multiple questions with in each section.
4. The responses of the survey will be stored to an SQL server database.

There is also a requirement to generate an output document from each survey response.

We are planning to implement this application using ASP.net.

I am looking for suggestions which will help us reduce the development effort. Is there any commercial/open source application which we can customize for our needs? is there any ready-made components which helps creation of dynamic ASP.net pages? I am only interested in application which i can host locally, as this has to be integrated to an existing application.

Answer 1

This may not be an exact fit, but worth looking at: Surveymonkey.

Answer 2

NSurvey used to exist for this, but I think they've gone solely commercial. If you can dig up the last open source release, it might be a good starting point.

Otherwise, don't build it. Subscribe to Wufoo

Answer 3

Another option would be to have users use InfoPath or Adobe Designer to create the survey forms that are distributed to survey takers (either by e-mail or web-site).

With InfoPath, you can have the responses call back to Web Services that you have written. Or, with both the packages, you can have the responses e-mailed back to a particular address and the XML that is sent can be parsed and processed.

Answer 4

Unless feedback systems are your business's core competency, you'd be best off using a third-party system. Building a survey system is not as easy as it might seem, especially when it comes to reporting. Sure, you'll be able to bang out some simple reports without too much trouble, but every change wanted by a customer (or your boss) is time you'll be dumping into your survey and reporting engine when it could be spent on your actual business. Do yourself a favor and outsource that headache to a third party.

If your needs are simple, a freebie site like SurveyMonkey would be just fine. If you're looking for something more sophisticated, such as support for phone surveys, more advanced reporting, etc., you'd need to pay for a more advanced service, such as (cough) the one I work for.

Answer 5

have a look at phpESP as well. I just browsed through their code but I'm not able to determine the quality. It's definitely not OO and there is no separation of business and display. yet it doesn't look like developed by a beginner.

Answer 6

http://www.codeplex.com/WebSurvey looks like a good place to start